I consider myself a fairly intelligent person. I would say I am fairly knowledgeable in the workings of consumer electronics gear and computers. I took several film and video classes in college, and even interned at a video production house. I would consider myself qualified to work a video camera, and a computer. Then why in all things holy CAN'T I GET THIS THING TO WORK?

To a surprising amount of excitement, Microsoft announced the a pair of new tablets this week. Web reactions to the new Surface — as you’d expect — were split down party lines: “It’s not an iPad! It’s stupid!” and “It’s not an iPad! It’s the second coming!”

Reality, as usual, is somewhere in the middle. It’s possible the Surface is a worthy iPad competitor something that, so far, we have not seen.

Am I the only one who finds it strange that the maple tree and maple syrup are two very different colors? I bet I am. Ketchup and tomatoes are the same color, and most jellies and jams are the same color as the fruit they're made from. Mustard looks like…the mustard plant? OK, forget that last one.

It's 61 miles from our Studio to the Huntington Beach Hyatt where Mitsubishi was holding their line show. It's all highway driving, which in most parts of the country would constitute a drive time of about an hour. Thanks to the fickle nature of L.A. traffic, it took 2.5. A colleague who lives near our studio left 10 min later than I did, and it took him 3 hours. Gotta love it.

Mitsubishi announced the HC6000, an update of the HC5000. They seem to have addressed all the issues we had with the 5000, such as the slow iris, and tiny menu size, but kept the things we liked, like the HQV processing and the low price. In fact, that got a bit lower, the HC6000 is “under $4000” and should be available in the middle of October.

This is the first of a three part series where I get to write about two of my favorite things that I never get to write about: audio and cars. As more and more audio companies get out of the house, we’ll see more and more of this cross-pollination.

It seems like nearly every high-end audio company is trying to get out of the house and into the car these days. While at first this appears strange, it makes a lot of sense. The home audio market has been stagnant for years, and every bit of exposure can only help. The car also has several aspects that make it somewhat easier to design for than the home. For one, you know where your listeners are going to be, and you know with a lot of certainty what and where the reflective and absorptive surfaces are. The downsides, of course, are road noise, and less than perfect speaker placement. There are many ways a company can approach these problems, and done well, they can sound vastly better than the stock system, and often better than any aftermarket system as well.